WATCH ABOVE: RFSU Norge published the public service announcement June 21 on YouTube.
TORONTO – A Norwegian public service announcement (PSA) has caused quite a stir for its use of a man dressed as a giant penis that shoots glitter at people to promote safe sex.
What’s not to love about a gigantic, walking (and probably talking) penis that shoots a type of confetti all over unsuspecting victims in public places? The consensus in Norway, where the PSA has been broadcast, is that it borders on the inappropriate.
“The campaign found favour and people understood the humour in our message,” Involve! Adverstising agency’s Pernille Berg said in a statement. “Although many, especially those over 30, thought the campaign was both banal and idiotic.”
Others, like the man inside the costume Philip van Eck, enjoyed every second of it.
“I thought it was hilarious. If I can do a good thing for others, just by being a dick, there is nothing better,” van Eck told Tønsberg Blad.
The 44-second “Penis Can Surprise You” campaign has been watched on YouTube more than 260,000 times as of the time of this writing and was created for RFSU, a sexual information and advocacy charity based in Sweden. It promotes the use of condoms among younger generations within a nation that has a higher rate of sexually transmitted infections than its Scandinavian neighbours.
Twenty-three thousand Norwegians contract chlamydia annually, according to RFSU.
“If you’re working with young people, humour is often the way to go, rather than using scare tactics,” spokeswoman Christina Placht told Newsweek. “There is a simple yet serious message behind it. We have to get more people using condoms in Norway.”
But an apparent lack of safe sex isn’t just a Norwegian problem. Reported cases of chlamydia, syphilis, and gonorrhea have been steadily rising since the late 1990s, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.
In 2008, for example, 70 per cent of the 161,500 reported cases of notifiable diseases were sexually transmitted. Chlamydia made up 51 per cent of these STIs.
Ontario Public Health probably put it best in a statement on its sexual health website: “Wearing condoms is the best way to reduce your risk of getting an STI.”
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